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Show LOYAL SUPPORT IS LACKING Farmers Make Failure of Cooperative Organizations Because They Do Not Stick Together. Co-operative organizations fail for many reasons; one, because they are often not really co-operative in their character, but are in the nature of corporations, in which one man, or set of men, gets an underhold and finally strangles them. Another reason is that our people are not yet educated up to a point where they will hold together, if some opportunity for special profit is not offered. We are sorry to notice in one of our exchanges the failure of a very prominent co-operative egg association. as-sociation. As long as they stuck together, to-gether, the members as a class received re-ceived several cents a dozen more for their eggs than they had been in the habit of receiving, because they were always furnished fresh and clean, first-class first-class in every way, says Wallace's Farmer. As soon as the society was strong enough to affect the profits of the merchants of the town, these merchants mer-chants began to offer higher prices to enough of the farmers to render the co-operative organization ineffective. Just as soon as they get the co-operative enterprise out of business, they will begin to exact, and are in fact now exacting, the same profits as before, and the quality of eggs from that community com-munity will decline. This is the same plan that is worked by some of the centralized creameries, creamer-ies, for the purpose of breaking up the co-operative creameries in the state of Iowa. If the creamery organization is not very large "or strong, and a few men can be induced to leave it by being offered higher prices for cream, or a higher test, which is only another way of cheating, sooner or later the organization or-ganization will fail. Its operation becomes be-comes more expensive. The fixed charges remain, but the output is not so large; hence is put out at a greater great-er expense. Why is this? Simply because farmers farm-ers have not got the get-rich-quick microbe out of their systems. This microbe is worse than the germ of hog cholera or of foot-and-mouth disease, dis-ease, because it does not affect animals ani-mals but men, and affects them in the very vitals of their character. Whenever farmers get ready to stand together and be loyal to their association, associ-ation, that association will succeed, but until they are ready to do that, cooperative co-operative associations will fail. When anyone enters into an organization, organ-ization, he is in duty bound to loyally support it, even in the face of temptations tempta-tions to immediate temporary profit. Let us learn that character is infinitely more important than gain. The way to get rich quick is t get rich slow by helping each other to get rich This helps to build up character. Disloyalty Dis-loyalty to a co-operative organization, or any other enterprise we have agreed to support, but more especially a. cooperative co-operative enterprise, is destructive to character. Another way of breaking down the co-operative enterprise is sow discord dis-cord among brethren. That's an old, old story. Solomon, we remember, had something to say about the meanness of a man who sows discord among brethren, and he might have added, helps to sow it by listening to insinuations insinu-ations against those with whom he is working. This is true in social life as well as in co-operative enterprises. |